An Airbus A380, the world's largest passenger jet, passes the Los Angeles International Airport Theme building as it prepares to touch down on the inaugural visit of the superjumbo jet to Los Angeles, Monday, March 19, 2007. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

Photo: Reed Saxon

An Airbus A380, the world's largest passenger jet, passes the Los...

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The Airbus A380 approaches for landing at JFK International Airport in New York March 19, 2007. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton (UNITED STATES)

Photo: SHANNON STAPLETON

The Airbus A380 approaches for landing at JFK International Airport...

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An Airbus A380 crew member flies an American flag from a cockpit window as the plane makes an inaugural visit to New York's Kennedy International Airport, Monday, March 19, 2007. The superjumbo jet is 239 feet long, with a wingspan of 261 feet, a range of 8,000 nautical miles and room for 549 passengers. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Photo: Mark Lennihan

An Airbus A380 crew member flies an American flag from a cockpit...

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An Airbus A380, left, taxis past a JetBlue A320 at New York's Kennedy International Airport, Monday, March 19, 2007. The superjumbo jet is 239 feet long, with a wingspan of 261 feet, a range of 8,000 nautical miles and room for 549 passengers. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Photo: Mark Lennihan

An Airbus A380, left, taxis past a JetBlue A320 at New York's...

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An Airbus A380 passes a media group out on a runway as it makes an inaugural visit to New York's Kennedy International Airport, Monday, March 19, 2007. The superjumbo jet is 239 feet long, with a wingspan of 261 feet, a range of 8,000 nautical miles and room for 549 passengers. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Photo: Mark Lennihan

An Airbus A380 passes a media group out on a runway as it makes an...

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Watched by ground crews and media representatives the Airbus A 380 is pushed from its parking position prior to taking off bound for New York at the airport in Frankfurt, central Germany, Monday, March 19, 2007. For plane builder Airbus and German airline Lufthansa AG, the A380's first flight to North America, is a chance to show off the superjumbo to potential U.S. buyers and to the airports they hope will be flight bases for the double-decker jet. Some 550 people, including four pilots, four Airbus crew members, 23 Lufthansa cabin crew and 519 passengers, mostly Airbus and Lufthansa employees along with some reporters, were to be onboard. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

2007-03-19 13:56:30 PDT -- When the biggest passenger jet ever built landed today at airports in New York and Los Angeles following its first trans-Atlantic test flights, the double-decker jumbo Airbus A380 produced wide-eyed stares and much clicking of cameras. Beyond the immensity of the aircraft lie huge issues in commercial aviation.

Set to finally go into commercial service in October following nearly two years of production delays, the A380 will bring to the fore debate over a number of issues. Among them:

Whether ever-bigger planes or midsized planes flying ever-longer routes - such as the forthcoming Boeing 787 Dreamliner - will rule the skies; whether Boeing will recapture its lead from EADS Airbus; whether the United States and the European Union can ever stop accusing each other of accepting government subsidies while denying it is doing so itself; and even what airports will come to dominate international markets by renovating terminals and runways to handle the huge new A380.

Lufthansa flew the first trans-Atlantic A380 full of passengers - 500 in number, all invited guests - from Frankfurt to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. After lobbying aggressively, Los Angeles International Airport landed a second A380, sans passengers, carrying the Qantas colors. Both Qantas, the Australian carrier, and Lufthansa, the German carrier, have ordered the A380, following launch customer Singapore Airlines, which plans to take possession of its first A380 jumbos in October.

Today's maiden flights to the United States follow earlier test flights with passengers to major European and Asian cities.

Airbus has marketed the A380 as a 555-passenger aircraft - considerably more carrying capacity than today's biggest jetliner, the Boeing 747-400, which carries about 400 people. However, airlines, not aircraft makers, decide the ultimate seating configuration, and industry pundits speculate that despite the early hype about on-board gyms, airborne beauty salons and cool bars, some airlines will instead stuff 700 or 800 passengers into the new jumbo.

San Francisco International Airport hopes to land early services with A380s, given its prominence as a destination and transfer point for travelers crossing the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. SFO has proclaimed itself ready to take the plane, and even held a media event in January 2005 to say so.

"We see our growth coming in the international market," SFO director John Martin said two years ago. "These aircraft are very efficient. They'll handle four to five times more passengers than our average flight of about 125 passengers."

"We lobbied hard" to get one of the test flights to land in San Francisco, said SFO spokesman Michael McCarron, "and we knew LAX was lobbying. LAX got it. We aren't sure why. Singapore Airlines is the launch customer for the plane, and we have indications that they will fly the A380 to SFO when regular service begins."

SFO widened some taxiways and strengthened surfaces to handle the heavy plane, McCarron said, but otherwise the airport has had to make few changes for the A380. "The International Terminal was built with double deck levels at the gateways to accommodate the A380," McCarron said.

According to press reports, LAX has budgeted $121 million just to get ready for the A380 and is still not prepared for regular service to begin. Last year, Virgin Atlantic Airways CEO Richard Branson said his airline, which has ordered several of the planes, plans to delay taking delivery chiefly because Virgin wasn't convinced LAX would be ready on time.

The A380 is designed for long-haul flights to big hub airports like SFO and represents a high-stakes gamble by Airbus, which originally expected to roll the big plane out in March 2006 and has taken orders for 156 of the aircraft. None of the orders has come from cash-strapped U.S. passenger airlines.

However, delays occasioned in part by installing complex electrical wiring on board the aircraft have delayed delivery, which in turn led to turmoil at Airbus. The company's chief executive resigned over snafus with the A380, and setbacks at Airbus - a European consortium backed by four governments and headquartered in Toulouse, France - recently prompted Airbus to announce it will lay off 10,000 workers. That announcement, in turn, has sparked strikes by Airbus workers in recent days.

To add to the drum roll of trouble, Airbus canceled further work on the freighter version of the A380. UPS is the only customer for the cargo-carrying version and UPS has declared its dissatisfaction over delays.

Chicago's Boeing Co., this country's largest commercial aircraft maker and Airbus' arch-rival, has put its money on building a medium-sized aircraft called the B787 Dreamliner, which is made for long-haul flights but will carry from 200 to 300 people and be able to serve smaller airports as well as massive hubs. The Dreamliner is scheduled to come into service in 2008. Made of light composite materials and touted as highly fuel-efficient, Boeing is pitting the 787's sleekness against the A380's size.

Early orders for the B787 have been strong, prompting Airbus to hedge its bets on the A380 and start planning for a mid-sized aircraft called the A350 to compete with the B787.

All this comes against the backdrop of international trade disputes.

The United States, acting at the behest of Boeing executives, has filed a case against the European Union before the World Trade Organization, charging that the governments of EU members Britain, Germany, France and Spain have illegally subsidized Airbus to the tune of billions of euros so it can build the costly A380. Washington charges this is a violation of WTO rules and has asked a panel of WTO judges to rule on the matter.

Not to be outdone, the EU has accused the United States of lavishing lucrative defense and aerospace contracts on Boeing by the federal government - along with incentives offered to Boeing by the states of Kansas and Washington - which the EU says constitute de facto market-distorting subsidies.

All this acrimony has clouded the debut of the super jumbo, which is still months away from flying a commercial route that is not a staged media event. But Airbus - along with JFK and LAX airports - got what it wanted from Monday's spectacular twin landings, which is to draw positive attention to the aircraft and make awed spectators forget about the company's troubles and the painful way they are playing out on the international stage.